The Creative Process: The Arts of War (Spring 2017)

The Creative Process
by them. Some of the images of jawans seem like candid shots,
veering more towards personal mementos of the war rather than the
aspects of war documented for their news value.
While a study of previous Indian war photography from the Indo-
Pakistan War of 1965 reveals a multitude of photographs attributed
to the Photo Division of the Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting, the possibility also exists of the Press Corps of the
Indian Army and other armed forces releasing images through their
respective channels. There may be an underlying reason behind the
highly possible, controlled dissemination of images of the war
without attribution to a particular person: to prevent the rise of the
cult of the individual photographer. War photographers tend to
become celebrities, much like Robert Capa, Roger Fenton, and
Matthew Brady, and because of that their work takes on additional
meanings. For example, despite Capa’s role as a war photographer,
and his supposed neutrality of representation, he and his partner,
according to Randy Kennedy in The Capa Cache, “made no
pretense of journalistic detachment during the war — they were
Communist partisans of the loyalist cause.” To maintain control
over the lives that war photographs take after their publication, it
becomes imperative to control the lives their photographers take on.
By removing the human origin of the photograph, however, and by
releasing it through press releases and channels, war photography
becomes the state’s means of controlling the narrative.
THE ICONOGRAPHY OF HOWITZERS & LARGE
GUNS
Some of the most iconic images that came from the Kargil War were
those of the Swedish-made Bofors howitzers. According to defence
analysts, the Bofors Howitzers and larger guns gave the Indian army
“an edge over the Pakistanis” that would not have been conceivable
previously. These howitzers captured the imagination of the public,
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